Süßkartoffel

Seeds

Not Available

Season Overview

Propagating

Planting

Harvest

J

F

M

A

M

J

A

S

O

N

D

Description

The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a crop plant from the Convolvulaceae family and belongs to the nightshade order. It is thus a distant relative of the potato (Solanum tuberosum), but otherwise has little in common with the latter. The sweet potato is a climbing climber that forms large triangular leaves.

Non hybrid

Not frost resistant

Growing tips

Since the sweet potato comes from tropical regions, the mild climate in Europe is sometimes a bit chilly for it. Therefore, you should always plant a sweet potato plant in your bed after the Ice Saints in May. If you decide to grow sweet potatoes in a pot, then you have it a bit easy and can simply bring it into the warmth during colder nights. Sweet potatoes should always be pre-planted as a general rule, as they have very long germination times in Europe. You basically have two options for this: 1.) You can preplant a sweet potato in a jar, this principle is similar to preplanting an avocado pit. Instead of the core, the entire sweet potato is placed in water with the lower end. There, long shoots will form. When these are about 20 centimeters long, you can set the tuber outdoors. To do this, carefully dig it halfway into the soil. Caution: The delicate shoots break off relatively easily. 2) Alternatively, you can let your sweet potato plant germinate in a box with soil. In a bright room, it will begin to sprout after a few weeks. Once your sweet potato is planted in the bed, it is relatively undemanding. Only warm and preferably protected from the wind it should be. The sweet potato plant has no problems with weeds; as the family name "showy vine" suggests, it quickly overgrows the bed and everything in its vicinity. The harvest of sweet potatoes begins around September (or when the leaves turn yellow). At the latest when the temperature drops below 10 degrees, you need to get your sweet potatoes out of the ground, otherwise they will die of cold.